Tabac Rouge

A “choreodrama” in which James Thierrée uses dance to probe the human condition

In Tabac Rouge, James the acrobat, the mime and the actor proposes us a « choreodrama » textless, wordless and maybe even plotless, with a toxic and fantastical vision. Costumes by Victoria Chaplin. All the rest by James Thierrée. At the heart of this world, a haunted, pipe-smoking tyrant, a defeated old man sunken in his decrepit armchair. And at his feet: the people, like woodlice or ants, scuttling around, perched on rollers or climbing in the air. To make the drama rumble, the choreographer has concocted a world steeped in Dantean darkness: a stage that is an extension of the world, full of people and a hodgepodge of objects, mirrored walls, lunatic piping, scaffolding, cables, perches, a catapult, lamp-bodies with lampshade heads, noise, patched-up circuits and well-balanced contortions. It’s a dance that doesn’t forget its origins. From the imagination of a magician who made his name in 1998 with a turbulent and circus-like Symphonie du Hanneton (Symphony for a Beetle). That little beetle, as his family called him, became the name of his performing company. Fifteen years later, the beetle begins to consider his possible retreat from the stage. As if to better face it, no longer blinded by the lights.